Nvidia is phasing out multiple older graphics cards to vacate space for RTX 30 series offerings

Nvidia upgrades itself! Nvidia might retire a few entry-level performance-focused graphics cards from the Turing era, according to rumours spotted on the Chinese tech forum Bobantang. Nvidia is rumoured to suspend the GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Super cards. These Nvidia GPUs were a mid-ground between 2016's Pascal GPUs and the RTX 20 series offerings. Gamers can expect slightly more performance than the GTX 1070 with these video cards.

The main reason Nvidia launched these particular models was to offer gamers a cheaper alternative to the pricey RTX 20 series offerings. The chief selling point of the RTX graphics cards back in the day was ray tracing, a tech that was not mature enough yet. Very few games supported ray tracing back then. The cut-down versions of the RTX graphics cards sold in a massive amount and very easily gained the market. Both the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 and the 1660 Super take up the top spots on the Steam hardware survey charts even today. Although, Nvidia might not discontinue the budget GTX 1650, the 1650 Super, and the 1630 GPUs. The GTX 1630 was just introduced a few months back as a successor to the GT 1030.

Nvidia is also planning to discontinue the RTX 2060 and the 2060 Super GPUs. the RTX 2060 and the 2060 Super GPUs were being sold only to offer crypto miners a viable alternative to the in-demand RTX 3060 and 3060 Ti GPUs. A 12 GB variant of the RTX 2060 Super was introduced with the sole purpose of attracting miners. Now that the GPU mining industry has completely evaporated, it makes sense to cut down the production of older graphics cards and allocate resources to the production of newer graphics cards.

Although, readers should take the information with a grain of salt. These developments are rumours that were posted on China's Bobantang tech forums. Presently, the GTX 1660, the GTX 1660 Super, and RTX 2060 are still open for sale at most retail stores. However, the stock might not be replenished once the GPUs get sold out. The GTX 1660 Super was spotted on Newegg for as low as $150, the GTX 1660 is available for $169, and the GTX 1660 Ti is currently selling for as low as $189.

The RTX 2060 is right now open for sale at US$219.99 and the 2060 Super is available for $246. The 12 GB variant of the RTX 2060 is available for US$249. However, having these older and slower graphics cards will not be much helpful. For around the same price, the AMD Radeon RX 6600 is a much more capable GPU.